Food security in Africa needs abundant, affordable and nutritious food for the growing population.
•Smallholder farmers lack sufficient land or economic incentives to invest in agriculture.
•The above issues create a ‘wicked problem’ – a conundrum for future food security.
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The paper critically engages with sustainable development goal targets (SDG-2- Target 2.3; SDG-5) to examine how and why large-scale agricultural land acquisitions modify the social relations of women’s food access. The study draws from impacts of various plantation schemes in Cameroon and Ghana…
In sub-Saharan Africa, the urban majorities are financially excluded from the formal housing markets and reside in informal settlements. Limited knowledge on the development of informal settlements compromises the efficacy of urban planning and policies targeting such areas. This study presents…
Urban parks provide various environmental, socio-cultural and economic benefits, also called ecosystem services, as well as challenges. Urban park planning and management needs to consider the perception and attitude of people towards the benefits, challenges and quality of the parks. However,…
Although land forms the basis for marginal livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, the asset is more strategic for women as they usually hold derived and dependent rights to land in customary tenure areas. Initiatives to secure women’s land tenure in customary areas are undermined by the social…
The “Responsible Governance of Investments in Land” (RGIL) project in Ethiopia aims at ensuring that investments in land are productive, contribute to sustainable land management, and respect the rights and needs of local populations, in particular vulnerable groups and women.
Through a…
Ghana is urbanising rapidly, and over half of the country’s population have lived in urban areas since 2010. Although research has proliferated to explore Ghana’s urbanisation, there is a dearth of research that holistically explores the wider sustainability implications of urbanisation, offers…
Land tenure security, especially customary residence systems, is found to influence the agricultural investment decision-making and productivity of smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa. However, as country-specific customary residence systems and farming models evolve over time, their…
After more than ten years of hectic debates on international ‘land grabs’, academic interest in collapsed land deals or projects with unexpected results is growing. According to the Land Matrix, Tanzania is one of the target countries for such deals, with a number ‘abandoned’ or delayed and…
Conservation Agriculture (CA) is advocated as an agricultural innovation that will improve smallholder famer resilience to future climate change. Under the conditions presented by the El Niño event of 2015/16, the implementation of CA was examined in southern Malawi at household, district and…
The “Responsible Governance of Investments in Land” (RGIL) project in Uganda fosters investment quality promotion to ensure that agriculture and forestry investments in land are productive, contribute to sustainable land management and respect the rights and needs of local populations, including…
Despite an inflow of investment in rural communities, there are concerns about negative impacts on local people’s livelihoods, access to farming land, productivity, income levels, food security and access to social services. The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) research partnership…